Childe of the Swans
by Ryuujin Shishou
Summary: We were before the Volturi and before the Romanians. We were the first: we were the Swans. (Vampire! Bella, Pairings undecided) Carlisle spoke: "-and listen, children. Should you meet an ancient vampire like the Volturi, remember: to those who saw cattle be domesticated, we're all just reinventing the wheel."
1. A Prehistoric Fall

_**A/N: **_This story will be **rated M** for gore, immorality/racism/injustice that is not pointed out as such, blood and general darkness. **PAIRINGS NOT DECIDED**. I'm wavering between Edward and Jasper at the moment: they seem the best suited for this story. Tell me in the reviews which you'd prefer, yeah?

**Canonical Isabella Swan **is irregularly morally distanced, shallow-minded and egocentric (and egotistical). This fic will be written with these characteristics in mind – you'll probably (ironically) find her very OOC because I'm trying to keep those previously mentioned canon characteristics a stable part of her personality. The Bella in this story is not written to be sympathetic to a modern teenager, though** she won't be dark or cruel**. By the time we catch up to the time of the books, she will be ancient and likely very out of touch with humanity and younger vampires.

Bella and most other "ancient" characters will have moral values, beliefs, religions, and ways of thinking that differ from what we expect from a well-raised, modern citizen. If this offends you in any way, well… BEWARE. And **please don't flame because of Bella's beliefs** – they will seldom match my own in this work and I won't cry because you, also, don't agree with them.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Twilight Saga or anything related to its franchise. I earn no money from this.

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><p><strong>Childe of the Swans<strong>

_**Chapter One: A Prehistoric Fall**_

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><p><em><strong>Ca 4000 BC, British Isles<strong>_

A sheep bleated in the darkness of our little tent. Father was snoring lightly from his place on the other side of my mother, holding her close to him as she slept through the howling wind of the night. My husband hiccupped when I turned on the large grass mattress I shared with them and I winced as I roused another sheep. The heat in our little tent – made out of wood and animal hides – was comfortable, even though the hearth was only a steadily glowing ember now. The body heat of my husband, parents and little siblings and the animals helped keep the dampness out, but it was still chilly if you poked a toe out from underneath the layers of pelts and hides and cloths that we had burrowed down among.

The need to pee, however, was stronger than the fear of the chilly outdoors or the howling wind.

With a last, suffering sigh I crawled out from the cozy sleeping area and padded across the pelt-covered ground to the tent opening. Mon, our dog, opened one of his eyes to check what I was doing but then went back to sleep, as did the sheep. I could barely see them in the faint light of the hearth, but I knew that the animals could see me easily enough. I smiled and shook my head. Not even Mon wanted to go outside in the middle of the night during early winter.

Once outside it was easier to see – despite the clouds, both the stars and the moon gave much light at this time of the moon-cycle and I easily found my footing on the rocky hillside where my grandparents had once built this homestead. About twenty longboats away, our land's high plateau gave away to a small rocky shore far below, and beyond that roared the frothing, cold waves of the ocean.

The area that was currently reserved for a latrine was not too far away from our tent and nights like this I was very thankful for that. The cold wind howled like pained wolves around me, between rocks and trees and through chasms, and I hurried to relieve myself before I got too cold. Once I was dressed again I started immediately for our family tent, only to pause after a few steps.

Was that… was that a sheep?

I tilted my head and focused on listening. Yes, it was a sheep bleating somewhere to the southwest, away from the shores.

"Elar?" I muttered, thinking of the ewe that had been lost a few days earlier. Could it really be Elar?

It wasn't something I could ignore. A sheep – especially an ewe as good a mother and wool-producer as Elar – was worth far more than a night's sleep. Father had been ever so angry when my youngest brother had lost the ewe and if I returned it, maybe it would all be forgotten. My brother was still only seven autumns old, and he had cried the whole day afterwards. If that was our sheep… we'd have several days of food in reserve again and a sheep worth's of more wool than we would have otherwise. The tribe could definitively use another sheep once the first snow came.

There was no discussion necessary, yet I hesitated for another short moment. Part of me wanted to go wake up my father or my husband, for I knew how dangerous it was to move alone in the darkness of the night, especially at this time of the year. Mother and a few of the other gatherers had heard wolves yesterday, and I wasn't stupid enough to not realize that dwarves and cruel, mischievous spirits of other kinds would have their eyes set on me if I as much as set foot outside our tribe. But at the same time, I also knew that if I were to find and bring Elar home on my own, I would be able to reap big benefits later. I might even be allowed to watch Wulfric make our new shoes instead of having to go fishing – and get a good excuse to spend quality time with his son Þunor, my beloved husband since five days. Þunor's mother was not too fond of me, but if I came to watch Wulfric work I should be able to get past the sour woman. Þunor worked with his father during the days, and I had not spent much daylight with him since we had given our pledges.

Before I could convince myself otherwise I set out towards where I thought the bleating had originated. For a moment the moon was hidden by the clouds and as empty darkness surrounded me, I had time to think that perhaps it was a trap by fairies or trolls or perhaps a face-stealer – there were many creatures out there that would mimic sounds to lure the healthy into danger.

I walked for a long while, constantly conscious of every turn of the animal trail I had chosen to walk along. Once in a while I could hear the sheep call for its herd, and to be honest it calmed my rushing heartbeat. Sheep were silent when they got hurt or scared, so it should mean that Elar was simply lost or stuck in a groove some-

The ground underneath my feet fell away as if pulled by invisible hands. With a scream I fell forward and down and down and the cold air rushed against my skin and there was no time to think anything but a plea to the Great Mother and then I hit the ground. I slammed down with my legs first, feeling the unbelievable pain tear through my left leg as if through someone else. Everything came to a jarring stop and it felt as if the sky dropped down on me; as if the very air was pressing me down against the cold stone below and forced the air out of my lungs. Could you drown on land? I was drowning on land.

I gasped for air and clawed around me, whimpering as I got a view of the cliff I had fallen down. Water lapped at me from the side and filled my right ear, and I couldn't understand because I had been so sure that I had been moving away from the shore. From above and beyond I hear the sheep bleat again and I couldn't help the cry that left me.

Help me! I tried to call, but nothing but a scream of anguish left me. I looked around, but it was too dark for me to see much of anything.

Many waves of the ocean passed, but then I could finally breathe properly again and tried to sit up, the wounded leg stretched out in front of me. With trembling fingers I touched and poked and prodded myself, screaming out as I touched my left leg at the knee and down.

I stared up at the sky, tears running down my face and into the salty ocean water next to me. The stars twinkled above, and though I was low below ground level – all the way down where the ocean met the pebble beaches and cliff shores – I had never felt closer to the lights. It felt as though I could reach out and almost touch them with my fingers, if only I stretched enough, and though I was still crying I couldn't help but smile. Every star was a mighty god and the night sky was the doorway to their home, I knew this and I knew the stories well, and I wished that one of the stars would come down for me because I couldn't reach them yet.

The cold hit me suddenly, as if I hadn't felt it before. I could feel it creep into my bones, gnawing like I imagined cruel spirits would and numbing me.

Were they demons? I shook and tried to beat the invisible beasts away, but couldn't reach them. I imagined I was already one step closer to the dark undergrown and I screamed because I didn't want to go there. I didn't want the face-stealers to have my face; I didn't want the creatures of the dark feeding on my flesh; I didn't want the boulder trolls to come alive and make me one of them. I wanted to go up to the stars, to the gods I had followed so faithfully for all of my very impressive eighteen years, but most of all I wanted to be whole and safe in my parents' home. What would happen, now that they had no daughter? Would they cry for me? I knew they would, yet I still found myself wondering if they would. What about my husband? What of fair, good-hearted Þunor? He would move back to his parents' tent, now that we would never get the chance to make our own. Would he find a new woman to share his life, all the ups and downs?

I didn't want to die, yet I knew that they couldn't help me now.

I knew, instinctually and through the prodding of fingers, that the bone in my leg was broken and my knee joint had popped. I would never walk again. My leg would kill me slowly – rocks that crushed limbs were infused with toxins of dwarves, and the toxins will make your body rot from within. I would be a burden to my family; unable to move from the cot, bringing sickness and death into our tent and tribe. They would have to feed me and bathe me and do everything for me, while I tried to outlive a useless, rotting leg.

I cried.

Who wants to die? I didn't. I had a family and a home. I had food and roof over my head and I was of good blood – I had survived to adult age, a testimony of my parents' skills and my own strength, I lacked no teeth for I used twigs to clean them like my grandmother had, and I had the love of strong and kind Þunor. The tribe would have helped us collect hides and branches for our own tent one day, and we would have had our own children to raise.

As I lay there in the dark, I wondered why the creatures that had lured me here were taking their time. Did they truly enjoy watching me suffer, or had something happened? I couldn't hear any commotion, as I imagined there would have been if my husband or father or brothers had arrived in time to fight the creatures.

"Hello?"

I screamed in fear as someone appeared at the edge of the cliff above, silhouetted against the starry night sky like I imagined a god would be. His skin, even from afar, glowed in the moon light and I knew he was not human. Deep red eyes looked down at me, but not with humor or cruelty or even indifference: instead, there was worry in his eyes that made me chip for breath. I didn't dare answer him and I bit my cheek to keep from whimpering as he suddenly appeared by my side.

I wondered if this was how a face-stealer looked. He was more handsome than I had ever imagined a human could be – so beautiful that I wanted to bow down and ask him to spare my lowly, dirty self. His clothes were as thin as high-summer clothes, as if the cold didn't bother him the slightest, and his skin of which plenty was bare was free of any dirt in a way I had never seen before – as if his skin did not absorb color and dirt anymore. I imagined that even blood would not smear on him and seep into his skin; instead I imagined it would pearl on his skin like morning dew on a flower. Even nature would not dare taint such flawless beauty.

"Oh, dear", he muttered as he crouched next to me, and I whimpered in fear even though I was breath-taken by his beauty. "This is not good."

An icy finger, a dead and stone hard finger, touched my finger and I tried to stay as still as I could. As if I could somehow fool him that I didn't exist. As if it would keep him from stealing my face. I wanted to plead, I wanted to scream that the face it had now was far more beautiful than mine could ever be. Not a sound escaped me.

"I can help you. I can take the pain away, forever." He leaned closer, red eyes searching mine and I believed him even though I knew he was going to kill me. "You will be like me. You will be so beautiful. You will run so fast, climb so high, jump so far. I can make you strong and powerful."

My chest heaved and I felt lightheaded. I believed him now – he was no face-stealer. I wanted to believe him.

"I can't go back", I rasped out, and I saw something flicker in his eyes.

Pain. Pity. Regret.

"Are you really a god?" I asked and somehow – somehow – I managed to lift a trembling hand to his face.

He seemed chocked that I would touch him. He froze, like a troll turned to stone yet beautiful like a star, and when I didn't remove my hand he put his own over it with red eyes so wide that I felt pity grow in my own heart.

"You're alone, aren't you?" I whispered to him. "You're alone. You're no god, no real god, but you're no face-stealer either. What are you?"

I was at his mercy, spread out on the rock by the ocean. I could not go home.

He didn't answer my questions.

"I can save you", he repeated.

For the first time that I could remember in my life, I begged. "Please."

He leaned down with pained eyes and I felt his lips against my throat.

And then the pain overwhelmed all else.

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><p>I didn't try to put the pain into words. There were no words for this pain. It went beyond broken limbs, beyond popped joints and beyond crushed toes.<p>

When it was over – and I had thought it never would – I opened my eyes to a new world. The first thing I noticed was the colors. It was as though I had watched the world through a mist my whole life, and suddenly I could see colors I had never realized existed. I saw the dust in the air dance like fairies in the wind, I saw little lice and insects crawl across the individual treads of the blanket that covered me and I saw the pores in my skin as if I was holding my arm right in front of my eyes in bright daylight.

Then I saw my savior.

He was tall – extremely tall, I thought – with wide shoulders and the muscles of a man used to hunting and fishing. His hair was brown like my own, and his eyes were black with a red tint to them. He had no beard and it made him look boyish, like my younger brothers, even though he had stubble. For some reason he had saved his beard over his upper lip, but though it was unfamiliar to me I felt it kept him from looking too childish.

He was undeniably attractive, though I could easily tell that he was much older than me. Perhaps he was twice my eighteen years – an amazing age for a man, not to mention to be so fit and handsome – but I had to admit that I felt no attraction to him. I should have – he was handsome and strong, and his eyes were compassionate even in their strange coloration. It would not be strange for us to give pledges, but I felt as if he would never be interested in me that way. I had given myself to another, but I knew in my heart that I would not be able to go back to him.

I sat up on the cot where I found myself, studying myself. I would admit that I had not met many others in my life, but I wanted to imagine that I was not hideous and that I was at least a decent match for someone out there. I was healthy and if I may say so myself I felt I could make a very good woman for any tribe, be it at the shore or inland – I knew the ways of life on water and land alike, even if my coordination had never been superb. I could gather, sow, fish and herd; I could cook and preserve food, sheer and milk the sheep. Few of my blood had died in childbirth, and I had good hips and a strong back even if my shoulders were narrow. And though I had no skills to brag about and no special aptitudes at tool-making, I was still of healthy blood. I knew how to keep my family alive, but little more, but I had always hoped that it would be enough. To Þunor it had always been enough.

Now I wasn't sure if it even mattered anymore.

"How are you feeling?" my savior asked me.

I licked my lips. "I feel… light. Like I don't weight much."

He smiled at me and nodded, and I stared in amazement as he pushed away the hides from the tent opening and sunlight streamed into the darkness around us. The rays of light hit him as though he was a precious stone, and light danced around the room as if he had stolen the light of the sun and now radiated it himself. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It was not human.

I didn't realize that I had gotten on my feet until he took my hand in his – yet it didn't feel cold anymore, and I wondered if I had imagined it before. He led me out the tent opening and I ducked under the low edge and then we were out in the open. I breathed in deeply and looked around in absolute amazement.

We were high up with a view of the ocean and cliffs that reminded me strongly of home, as though I could run and be home before the sun had traveled more than a hand length across the sky. The scent of sea hit me and I smiled and tilted my head back as the sun hit me. It felt unbelievably good and I wanted nothing more than to remain in the sun forever.

I smiled.

"We sparkle", I told my savior with a laugh. "Like stars! I am a star in the sun!"

He smiled, and if he thought me stupid for stating something so obvious while he stood there next to me, sparkling even brighter than I, he didn't show it.

"I am Charle", he said once I had taken to studying my own glittering hand in fascination. It looked like I had covered myself in miniscule, white precious stones of the kind my mother adored so.

"Sabelä", I answered and automatically dipped my head and grabbed his forearm in a shake. Again he looked shocked that I had touched him, and I chided myself. But how would I know what to do or how to act? I rarely met anyone outside Þunor or my own family, because we lived quite far away from the rest of our tribe, always at the outer edge even when it was time to leave for our summer home. "They call me Child of Swans."

He smile wider at me and I felt like I was betraying my father, because I liked Charle's smile more than even his. Charle felt like a childless father.

"I scent a good story there", he said with a chuckle. "And maybe I can tell you of my own names, but first there are things we need to cover. Does your throat hurt?"

I blinked. "It… it burns", I whispered, moving a hand to my throat. I hadn't even noticed the pain, but now it seemed as if I had the sun down my throat.

Charle nodded, as if he had expected it, and I felt stupid because of course he must have expected it if he had asked me about it.

"You need to feed", he said. "Come."

He turned east and then we were running. We were running so fast that the air sounded like thunder in my ears and the wind hit my eyes so hard that I should have been crying. I had only ever experienced such speed that I could not keep my eyes wide open, and that had been when I had jumped off a tall ocean cliff once with my brothers. Instinctively, I knew I was moving many times faster than that now. Yet there was no discomfort – none at all. In fact, I felt a laugh bubble forth from my throat, but not my own. The laugh that left me was softer and smoother than my normal barking and it was sweeter than the wheezing laugh that escaped me when I lost control; it was a pretty laugh.

I didn't quite know what happened next until afterwards.

It wasn't like when I hunted rabbits in the past, or when I fished with only my hands in the river; there was no endless, silent waiting for my pray to come to me, there was no moment of holding my breath as I waited for the exact right moment to pounce. There was just a scent and a flash and then blood. It was sweet, sweet life that flowed down my throat like the drink of gods, and I drank like a man who had seen no water for two days. There was flesh and blood everywhere and I think the gray matter in my hands was a brain but at the time I didn't care.

Afterwards I screamed and cried and hit Charle over and over while he held me to his chest. There was no rabbit or fish or even deer or sheep. I had killed all those things and more in my long eighteen years, but this was no animal corpse that lay on the ground before us. Blood covered my entire front and I wanted to puke and yet also lick up the wasted red liquid, and my hands were smeared with gray brain matter.

That was the mutilated corpse of a man.

That was the crushed, ripped and bloodless corpse of Þunor.

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><p><strong>AN: **

As you can tell, this story will be heavy on history. However, if you're looking for a story where Bella is the muse of Beethoven, the lover of Da Vinci, the chambermaid of some important king/queen/baron or met Shakespeare… and so on and on – please continue your search elsewhere. Bella will **not** be a person recognized by modern historians, or important in the politics after the Volturi took over the vampire world in 500 AD. She will, of course, have an important and influential place in **vampire history** – as you might already have assumed from the summary.

Those historical people will likely be referenced, to give a sense of place and time to the story and to ground it to the human world (as Bella will see it all from a vampire perspective), but if I do decide to bring any historically important and characters into the story it will be for a reason. For example, in early history cultural regions were small and it is very likely that Bella would run into the (very locally established) rulers at some point simply because of small distances and tiny populations. Some lesser known mythological characters and people only mentioned in old scripts may appear to give flavor.

**DO YOU know about some fascinating piece of pre-medieval history outside of Western Europe? Tell me in the reviews or PM me so that I can look into it, and it might appear in the story at some point!**

**Eventual, future pairing for Bella is still up to you.**


	2. Counting

**A/N: **Hi! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed and to all those of you who have marked this story for alerts and favorites! Without further ado, here's chapter 2!

Previous disclaimers and warnings still apply.

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><p><strong>Childe of the Swans<strong>

_**Chapter Two: Counting**_

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><p>There was no word that Charle knew of that explained what we were, but Charle told me we didn't need one.<p>

"Are there many of us?" I asked, kicking my feet to and fro like I had as a child. Around Charle I felt like a child, though it had been many years since I was old enough to carry children.

To Charle, who claimed to have lived for four times my father's age – a hundred years, he said, though I could not count that far and could barely imagine so many years – I imagined that my eighteen years must feel like a blink of an eye.

We were sitting on a stone ledge at the shore; so far up that I wondered how there could be air up here. It had only been seven days since I had woken up to this life, yet we had moved across the land until we reached another shore in the northwest where mountains reached far up into the sky. Charle had told me that in the beginning of time, trolls so large that the earth caved underneath them had been struck by the sun as they were unable to hide underground anymore, and the trolls bent over and stone grew over them into the mountains around us. That was why the clouds swept around us like mist – because trolls made mist appear even when turned to stone.

"Do you know how many men live on this island?" he asked me back, and I tilted my head.

"Island?" I asked, but even so I could see what he meant – had we not crossed the land until we reached the other shore? Would it be the same, if we ran far enough to the north and the south? "No. I do not know that."

Charle pointed out at the rocks and cliffs that jutted out of the sea far below and in front of us.

"Count as far as you can", he told me, and I did so until I had counted on each finger and toe two times. Usually, we counted in groups of twelve, but I didn't know how to tell him that.

"Twenty. But there are far more than twenty rocks." I looked out over the ocean, and as if this life had brought me more than just unnatural speed and strength I saw the rocks as if they were all grouped into herds of twenty rocks each. "There are twenty of the twenty rocks here, and more outside of this bay."

Charle nodded. "Take this bay, and imagine twelve of them. Can you do that? That is how many men live on this island."

I tried to wrap my head around such a large number, I really did, but I couldn't.

"Look around, Sabelä", he told me when he noticed I couldn't quite grasp what he was saying. "Use your eyes – forget that you were human once. Just look and do not try to think like you used to. Do not think of it in trees or sheep or pelts – think of it as the rocks."

I looked around, and for the first time I realized just how far we could see from our mountain peak – away and away, to where the mountains continued into nothing but a bluish, horizontal shade along the horizon in both directions. And along the coast I could see the bays: so many that I didn't know how to count them, just like the stars in the sky. And in every bay, there were countless rocks in the waters.

"Each of those rocks are people?" I asked. I understood now, though I couldn't imagine so many people at once.

"Yes. As far as you can count them – from here, I can count _five thousand_ rocks that are not pale blue like the mountains where the sky meets the earth."

I tilted my head at him. "_Five thousand_?"

"I do not know if there is a word for it in your language, Bella, but that is how you say it where I was born."

I wondered why anyone would need such a large number, but I didn't ask.

Charle spread an arm out and gestured at the rocks again. "I cannot tell you how many there are of us, but on this island I know of only five, and beyond on the land to the east I have met perhaps twenty."

For a while we sat in silence. Time seemed unimportant nowadays, when we were no longer ruled by the travels of the sun and his sibling, the moon. There was no need to sleep or pee or eat food, and I wondered if I needed to wash. I had peeled off most of my clothes until I wore nothing but a large pelt around my waist and sheep hide around my torso, with no need for shoes even though the ground was starting to freeze during the nights. I found myself able to stare at a single pine cone for a whole day, enraptured by the beautiful way it was designed, and though I was a dreamer by nature I had never before known the feeling of getting so lost in thought that it would take days before I even registered that the world was still moving around me.

I wondered how it would feel if I was as old as Charle.

"There are many things you need to know about us", Charle said after a while. "It will take many years until you can be around humans again. If you choose to stay with me, I will teach you all I know."

He knew he had me hanging onto his every word. He knew by now that I would never leave as long as he promised me knowledge.

I wanted to be able to count like he could. I wanted to know the languages of other people, after he had said words I could not understand. I wanted to know what was beyond this island I lived on. I wanted to know _more_ – more than I could ever learn on my own.

"Can we die?" I wondered. He had saved me from death – my leg was fine, as though nothing had ever happened to it. There was not even a scar left to remember the fall by. The only blemish I had was the double crescents on my throat from human teeth. Except it wasn't human: we weren't human anymore.

Charle nodded, but he didn't look too worried by the prospect. "Only by the hands of another of our kind. One needs to rip us apart into small pieces and burn us on a pyre for us to stay dead."

I wasn't sure I wanted to know what that meant, so I reminded myself to ask at another time when I had worked up the courage.

"Why do we sparkle?"

Charle didn't know that. He did tell me, though, that I could no longer bleed – if my skin for some reason broke and a vein was exposed like on a hare at slaughter, all that would escape me was my most recent victim's blood and the venom in my blood. The venom, like a snake's, was what turned us into what we were, and it helped keep our prey from escaping us (the pain was paralyzing). Our skin was hard like the strongest of rocks, and little could penetrate it beyond our own fangs.

"Listen now, Bella, because this is very important." He hadn't needed to tell me that: I was hanging on to his every word with wide eyes. "Do you know how two mellow sheep will give a mellow lamb?"

I nodded, because we had bred enough sheep for me to know that only the best wool- and milk-producers and only the most mellow ewes and rams should be bred. For each generation, they would become better if we found new blood to bring into the line – just like my bloodline had been healthy and strong-hearted.

Charle gestured at the both of us. "I am your sire, now – in essence, you are the next of my line, in terms of venom."

I tried to see where he was coming from. "Venom works like blood, then? From generation to generation – only, it is not between mother and father into a child, but between sire and… me? The venom in me was yours, but now it has changed slightly because I am I. So if I become a sire one day, that person would be of your venom line too, and so on and so on."

He tilted his head to the side, as if surprised at how I babbled on, but then he smiled proudly and nodded. "Exactly so. Now, as far as I am aware there are three major venom lines… hm." He seemed to ponder for a few moments before he continued. "Also like sheep. There are brown, white and black sheep – all of them are sheep, but they belong to different original bloodlines."

I nodded, refraining from telling him that there were also spotted sheep and sheet with different wool. I was sure he already knew that.

"Well, there are three kinds of us, I suppose one could say. My sire was almost four hundred years old – he was of what we could call the 'old' branch, or venom line, if you will. I was the only one he changed, and there are few alive today that share the same venom line as he did."

"So we are like white sheep? Not too rare, but not common either?" I asked, because most sheep I had come in contact with had been brown.

Charle nodded and smiled so widely at me that all his pearly white teeth showed – I had never seen teeth so clean and white, without a single one even yellowing and my whole body trembled with some kind of feeling I didn't know how to put into words. I wanted to bare my own and hiss at him. Without a sound, his mouth filled with sharp fangs – as if they shot down from his gums above his proper teeth. I jerked away from him in shock and felt cold rush down my spine, like I was confronted with something lethal that I had to fight or flee from. I thought he looked like a deranged fish – an incredibly dangerous fish with two rows of too-sharp fangs. For the first time, he did look like an unpleasant spirit: red eyed and with cruel incisors.

"We have fangs?" I wondered once I had told myself to trust him, and subconsciously I searched my gums with my tongue. There were strange depressions in my mouth, in my gums, in front of every tooth on both rows.

"We have fangs!" I snorted. "How do I… you know?"

I gestured with my fingers that I wanted to make mine appear like his just had.

This time I heard a slight sound as his teeth receded into his gums as fast as they had appeared, and the crawling feeling under my skin faded.

"We can practice it next time we feed", he promised me. "It is a natural reaction when you go in for a bite, so it will be easier for you to learn how it is supposed to feel."

It sounded logical enough, even though I'd rather learn to do it immediately because it was terrifyingly impressive and impressively terrifying at the same time.

"It felt uncomfortable", I admitted.

"It is a natural reaction. We are still human; still like dogs and wolves – to threat, we respond by baring teeth and either attacking or pulling away. It is especially strong for you now, while you are still very young, but it will always be there. I am your sire, so you do not respond as harshly to me.

"The other lines do not have fangs", Charle continued. "Otherwise our line is the same as the most common one. Then there was the third – I like to call them the sleepers."

"They sleep?" I asked in envy. Despite how amazing it was to never need to go to sleep to manage the next day, I already missed the feeling of waking up from a good night's sleep or a good dream.

Charles moved his head to and fro, as if that was not the whole truth, before he answered. "Not truly. They went into hibernation, of a kind: like bears, or insects during winter. It allowed them to stay alive for a very long time, as they usually hid themselves away while they slept. They've been extinct for quite some years now."

It scared me, that a line could be hunted into extinction – because there was no doubting Charle's face. Those people had been chased by their own kind until they were all dead, and why? Because they were of another line? It seemed strange, but I didn't really know enough of this world to judge.

"Moving on", Charle cleared his throat, clearly ready to switch subject. "We don't age. I do not know how long we can live if we are left alone – but at least a few hundred years."

I couldn't imagine living that long. But I wanted to, I realized. I wanted to live that long and see what would change. My grandparents had been the first of my bloodline to see sheep – who knew what I would see? Lynxes or horses that calmly ate from your hand? Food that could be harvested in winter? Tents for animals only? I wanted to know. Now that I had the chance, I couldn't imagine ever giving this up.

I had never wanted to live like I wanted now. Even though I couldn't go back home, even though I couldn't start a family with Þunor, even though all I had learned in my life now seemed completely useless – I wanted to live. I wanted to learn.

"Our kind never travels in groups bigger than three", Charle continued. "Usually, we move alone or in pairs. Most are mates, some are Sire and their Childe like you and I, and a few are just old friends."

"Why only three?" I thought it sounded nice – three was a good number. It was a small group, but not a gathering, and it was easy to move three around from place to place. There was no need to split up when you needed to do something, and it wasn't challenging to find enough to eat – feed from – for everyone.

"It is important that you always, always remember, Sabelä, that we are not the gods-sent people you seem to think we are", Charle chided me gently and I looked away. I wondered if I was blushing, because I felt like I should be. "Our kind gets irritated quickly, and we are prone to fighting over nothing. Groups larger than three usually disband simply because we're top predators – we have problems following a single leader when troubles crops up."

I recognized the irritation he spoke off – since I was turned I had been having mood swings worse than a twelve-year-old during her first period. That first day I had hit Charlie with everything I had, completely out of control. It had taken me half a day to calm down enough to think straight. Even now, I snarled like a deranged dog at anything that surprised me or frustrated me. I felt like a moron who couldn't keep her upper lip in place whenever anything happened.

"Will you teach me how to count that high?" I asked and gestured at the rocks in the ocean.

Charle smiled at me, and though I didn't understand why I couldn't help but smile back at him.

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><p>Counting was something I came to enjoy greatly. As Charle taught me his number-words – and I found I could memorize them all almost instantly – it seemed as though the whole world was suddenly made up of numbers. I counted trees in forests we passed through; leaves on a tree, pine cones on the ground, the amount of seeds on wheat ears.<p>

Charle also taught me how to speak in other ways – in other tongues. It would take me a long time to become fluent, he had said, as I met no one else but him to speak with. Therefore, about two years after I had first woken up to this life, we decided that it was time to move further away from my birthplace – perhaps even as far as the continent beyond the strait in the southeast.

Currently we were sitting in a tall, lonely tree at the edge of a large field. There seemed to be no sown plants here and we could smell no signs of past human settlements, and so it seemed as if this was not an annual stop of any nearby tribes. My own tribe always traveled the same way, between different settlements where crops and animals would be plentiful for the moon cycle. But the further south Charle and I came, the less tribes seemed to travel: in the years that had passed, I had seen settlements unlike any I had ever seen before. I had seen tribes that seemed to have settled down permanently in little stone homes, with more sheep than I had ever imagined could stay in one place. I had seen tribes that could navigate the waters as though the gods had originally meant for them to be born in the ocean. I saw many tribes that had not yet seen dogs and sheep, and I saw tribes where they could harvest stone and through sacred magic melt it into tools and ornaments of incredible beauty.

The horse-chasers we were currently following were more like my own tribe in that they followed the seasons. They used tents like those I knew how to make and they packed up every other morning and dragged everything with them to the next site – however, they traveled much lighter than I was used to, and Charlie explained to me that they stayed at only two places and travelled between them as the seasons changed. In those places, they had homes of stone, he said, where the chieftain had a stone home with a wall to make _two_ rooms, and where they could store large amounts of firewood for the winter.

There was a large horse herd out on the field, and though they had been nervous about our scent in the air when we arrived – they could smell predators, even if they did not know what we were – they had not strayed far from the field. The grass grew tall here, and the herd had many pregnant mares that needed all the food they could get. Two large, grey dun stallions were on guard along with a few older mares, and a group of colts and fillies kept to the outer edges of the herd – too old to be part of the main herd, but too young to go out on their own or become a herd of their own.

I had tried to pet horses a few moon cycles before, but though I could easily tackle them to the ground and hold them down by their heads it was hardly enjoyable and the only thing I managed to was to cause mass panic in the herd in question. Needless to say, I hadn't tried to approach horses to pet them again. I still entertained the idea that they one day would willingly eat food from a human's hand, because if sheep could be trained I wanted to image that also other beings could be domesticated. I especially wanted to see lynxes living alongside humans – I had only seen a lynx once, and I had been amazed at its silent grace. Charle thought I was silly and childish for thinking such things, I knew, but he always entertained my wandering thoughts.

"Could we feed from horses?" I wondered as I watched a filly prance as a yellow butterfly danced around in the air in front of the young horse's muzzle. "We used to combine boar blood and crushed wheat into these flat blood-cakes that we cooked over – anyway, could we eat that, too? It's blood, right?"

Charle glanced at me thoughtfully, scratching his short brown hair with his nails. I had asked him why – and _how _– he had cut it so short, because it was only a fingernail long, but he had refused to tell me. He might have been trying to keep me from getting bad ideas, because he had told me earlier to be careful with my own hair, as it wouldn't ever grow back if something was to happen to it. I wondered if someone had destroyed his hair once.

"We cannot eat grains, fruits, nuts or meat", he told me. "Only blood. I have never heard of anyone drinking animal blood in any quantities – it tastes bad."

I grinned at his tone of voice: he sounded disgusted. "You've tried?"

Charle snorted and leaned his back against the tree trunk, crossing his muscular arms across his chest. "It's edible, sure, and I've drained a lot of animals whenever I've been too far away from humans, but it's not something I would chose to do if I got the choice between animals and humans."

I nodded thoughtfully, looking back at the horses. A very old horse caught my eye, its yellowish, dun pelt falling out here and there. She looked tired.

"Are there a lot of humans in the world?" I wondered absent-mindedly while my mind calculated how to easily take down the horse without causing lethal panic in the rest of the herd. "Like here?"

Charle smiled like I had unearthed a beautiful stone he had buried for me. "Yes. More than we can imagine, though they don't all live like here. There are places where you and I could run for days without seeing even traces of humans, and there are places where hundreds of people live year-round in sturdy homes, together."

My eyes widened and I felt like I should be running there now – how could I be missing out on so much? I wanted to see these places he spoke off – here I could always smell humans now, if only as close away as half a day's run at our speeds. What would the trees look like? Would the air smell as it did here?

"How can they live so many in one place? And all year?" It was such a foreign thought that I felt giddy, like I had personally discovered these wonders and not just heard about them.

Charle continued to speak for days, telling me of his homeland in the far away east – further away than I had ever realized existed. He had grown up along the river of _Euphrates_, where the sun was impossibly hot and the river water was clear as if it had only just fallen from the cloud-free skies. He spoke of green marches, but not of the kind that I was used to; he spoke of large fields where whole tribes ('villages') harvested year-round. He spoke of _Uruk_ – a 'city' where his family used to 'sell' what they grew to the city inhabitants – and of a 'king' chieftain whom everyone followed and who led a large armed force. He spoke of the laws of King Enmerkar, and the armed men who carried out his order, and he spoke of how he had become one of these men before he became this not-dead creature that we now were.

Charle never ceased to amaze me. I felt like he was an ocean of knowledge that was just waiting for me to sit down and listen to its endless waves. He was twice the age of anyone I had ever met, and yet he had seen a thousand more things than I could even dream of. He had seen other cultures – he taught me that there were other ways of living outside of how I had grown up, which I had never even been aware of. He told me that not everyone looked like we did – whereas I was born with skin the color of milk, Charle had seen those born with skin as black as the night sky. His own human skin had been a glowing tan but it had been from the sun and not from his parents, for it faded with the years of this life. Now he was as pale as I was, as if the color was slowly washed out or as if an invisible layer of dust collected on his skin.

I wanted to be like him: calm and collected, wise beyond his years yet still curious about every new flower and tree we found.

"Charle?" I said slowly, standing up on the tree branch far up in the air several days later. Hunger had started to burn in my throat from our long stop. As a human I would have fallen and died simply from the height and my poor balance, but now I could easily jump down and still smile. "I want to try feeding from an animal. So that I know I can do it if we end up far away from humans."

He nodded and I got the feeling that he was proud of me for thinking ahead. Charle rarely praised me with words, but I was learning to read him so well that it was hardly necessary anyway.

I leaped out from the tree and felt as if my dead heart skipped a beat as the air rushed by. There was something exhilarating in it – like I was taunting death. Falling had lead me towards death but Charle had saved me, and though it had taken me a long time to dare jump down anything again I found it more and more exhilarating.

_Take that, death._

I laughed without care, throwing my head back like Charle had warned me not to do around like other vampires. The horses startled and looked around at the sound, but I didn't care. I could outrun any of them even if they got a long head start on me.

"Charle?"

He looked down at me with questioning eyes from the tall tree, and I smiled widely at him and stretched my arms as if to hug the whole world to me.

"After this, can we go to your home?"

I had never before seen him look so pleased.

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><p><strong>AN: To clarify, Bella IS NOT a vegetarian. This is simply her exploring this new way of life.**


	3. Our Kin

_**A/N: **_Big thanks to all who have reviewed and put this story on their alert/favorite lists!

Eventual pairings still undecided (one vote for Jasper so far). I like the idea of Stonehenge – I'll see if I can't incorporate that somehow, but I've finished an outline for quite far ahead of this chapter, so it might be quite a while before you get to see it. Can you come up with anything else you'd like to see?

Previous warnings and disclaimers still apply.

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><p><strong>Childe of the Swans<strong>

_**Chapter Three: Our Kin**_

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><p><em><strong>Ca 4000 BC, Central Europe<strong>_

To get to Uruk, we had to cross the world – or at least, that was how it seemed to me.

First we swam across the wide strait that separated my island home from the continent. I had learned before that I did not need to breathe, but not since I was a little girl had I imagined what it would be like to swim straight out into the water until I reached land once more. And we did reach land – a land of a size I couldn't wrap my head around by simply walking around.

People here looked different from how they looked back where I used to live, but not by that much. They spoke another language than my own, and so Charle and I frequently approached tribes and 'villages' with only the intention of conversation. I needed to practice these new languages, and I enjoyed the challenge just as much as the locals seemed to enjoy teaching me. Few feared us for long, for while they realized that we were not normal humans they did not know that we preyed on them like wolves, and I enjoyed meeting them. They always gave far more attention to Charle, but I didn't mind: I greatly enjoyed how I was able to move silently among them without them more than glancing at me as Charle talked to them. They were all so different, and they all reacted differently to our red eyes and frozen skin. There was one reaction that was always the same, though: when they saw us in the sun and we would shine and sparkle like stars under the sun, they all fell to their knees in praise, for none had seen something so beautiful before. None had ever reacted in fear at the sight of our skin.

Neither Charle nor I enjoyed the praise too much, but we preferred it above fear and there was no way for us to hide our true nature. Though there was still no name for us that we knew of, people here had their own legends of red-eyed creatures of the night. I had decided to refer to us simply as 'kin'.

It was in these new lands that I met others of our kind for the first time. I had not realized how gracefully we walked and moved, or how impressive it was to see two of our kind walk towards you in the sunlight. Charle could think whatever he wanted, but I knew without a doubt that we had to be the children of the brilliant gods in the night sky – what else could we be, but blessed and sent by the stars? For what purpose I didn't know, because gods did not work for or with humans.

We sensed them minutes before they came within sight, though from Charle's expression I assumed that they weren't trying to pass us by unnoticed. I could hear their footsteps and the swooshing of their animal hides and furs; the rustling of disturbed leaves and the whooshing of air sucked into frozen lungs. My dead body came alive and I wanted to hide myself in a badger's burrow until the creatures were no longer around. They terrified me, I realized, even though Charle didn't. Charle walked with his back straight and his head high whereas I was always crouching and jumping and stalking; he was like a steady chieftain or a moose with a large crown, whereas I was a cautious child or a twitchy weasel. These two strangers of our kin were nothing like us: they walked like spirits, their gaits large and airy as if they would at any moment float off the ground. Their red eyes were not as bright as mine, but not as deep a red as Charle's, and they had their hair in many thin braids as long as my forearm. Their skin was paler than Charle's, as pale as my own, and the blond male was sturdy and powerful. I imagined him as an easily threatened bull, and his brown-haired companion as a sprightly filly. The female was especially light in her steps as they approached us carefully, her eyes darting around and her upper lip twitching as if she was only just refraining from baring teeth at us.

I felt my own lip tremble in response and my limbs tense in preparation – to launch myself at her, I realized in shock. I had never felt such instinctual need to fight another being, save for when Charle had triggered my irrational irritation.

"Greetings!" Charle called in a soft but steady voice, and I thought he sounded then like someone my father would have instantly given respect.

"Greetings, kin", the male stranger said politely. His gaze flickered to me, as if I only then crossed his mind, and I saw the female twitch.

Before I realized what I was doing, a faint growl rumbled up my throat and Charle had put a heavy hand on my shoulder to keep me from leaping at her. I froze and then shook the anger off, labeling myself absurd as the other female seemed to control herself opposite to me.

"My apologies", I breathed in embarrassment, and I wished to disappear and be forgotten. I hated how their red eyes flickered to me and then up and down my body, as if mentally calling me a child and weak.

As if spurred by my thoughts and humiliation, blue flames flickered to life around my field of vision and I reared back in shock as a see-through, pale bluish bubble throbbed around me as if alive. I glanced around once it steadied, meaning to ask Charle what was happening to us and if we should be ready to counter attack our kin, only to see that none of them were paying me – or the blue bubble – any attention. Even as the bubble expanded and contracted around me, trembling and wavering and once in a while brushed against Charle and the other two, no one reacted.

It was as if they could see neither the bubble nor me.

"My name is Charle the Walker", my Sire introduced himself politely once they had exchanged news from the lands we had travelled through. "This is Sabelä Swanchild."

My name sounded strange translated into this new language, but I kept my mouth shut. The bubble wavered further, and though it didn't pop like I expected it to they all turned to look at me. I licked my lips and nodded politely at them all, murmuring that it was my pleasure. The language they were speaking was still hard for me to pronounce.

The color of the bubble around me sizzled, increasing from barely a sheen to a sharper light, and immediately the other's eyes drifted away from me. Charle gave me a second look, as if he could see my bubble for a short moment, but then his attention was drawn by the female and he seemed to lose his concentration.

The blond male in front of us nodded and gestured at himself and his brown-haired mate. "I am Björg, and this is Ælfþruð. We are from the north – from the southern coast of the East Sea."

They were both beautiful; as beautiful as Charle, I thought as I observed them from my new, glowing shelter. Björg was almost as tall as Charle and a whole foot taller than Ælfþruð, with ash blond hair and (what I had come to recognize as characteristic) burgundy eyes. Ælfþruð shared his eye color for obvious reasons, and though she must have been a worn and tired woman as a human I thought she looked like a wise, mystical healer. Their skin glittered in the warm sun, and I wondered if it felt as good for them as it did for me. It didn't look like they were particularly enjoying nor disliking the sensation, whereas I wanted nothing more than to spread out across a stone like a lizard and soak it up. I wondered if I could absorb the light into my skin and shine like a star in the dark. It was worth investigation.

As the three others talked, I observed my bubble. As I moved it followed along, sometimes encompassing several feet of air around me in all directions and sometimes coating my skin like clothe. I could feel it the same way I could feel my legs, almost unconsciously and without knowing how. The more I concentrated the more the bubble twitched around me, fading and increasing in color as well as changing shape, and slowly I became aware of how to command it. I imagined it was like learning to use a limb. I did not know how I moved my limbs, because they moved when I wished them to move, but I had still trained it up from infancy until I could use my limbs with precision. Every time the bubble lost some of its color and faded to my eyes, the others paid attention to me again. If I encompassed the female in my bubble, she became disturbingly aware of me, while Charle and her companion seemed to lose all thought of her.

I slowly and carefully molded the bubble tight around my body, ignoring how it sometimes pulse irately and tried to reach out, and willed it equally painstakingly to fade. It remained with me and I was at all times conscious of it, but as the others retained the ability to focus on me I realized that was how it had been since I woke up. The bubble had been with me since after I fell that night, as if this was its default place and intensity and I had not been able to see its color before. The bubble did not fade from my sight, constantly present like a second skin, but everything was back to how it had always been.

The kin left us, the female glowering at me, and I turned to Charle the moment I could no longer hear them.

"Why did I want to hurt her?" I wondered.

Charle threw me a glance. "It's natural. You are young, as was she, and you both have more intense emotions than even the rest of us. Females of our kin tend to experience stronger feelings of irritation towards other females than at males, I'm afraid – just like males of our kin are more likely to kill males than they are to kill females. It is not nearly as present in humans, but you can see the tendencies present in them, too. Everything about us is increased: our physical attributes, our minds, our beliefs, as well as our emotions and feelings such as dominance, hunger, possessiveness and selfishness."

I frowned. That did not feel good, and I refrained from baring my teeth at him. I knew he would respond strongly by instinct, even if it was just my childish emotions playing up – he would likely tackle me and put his teeth at my neck until I surrendered. I was stronger than him yet, though my Newborn strength was fading and supposedly would continue to do so, but his many years made it easy for him to hold me down through sheer skill and I instinctively bowed to him.

"Are all males more dominant amongst us?" I wondered, thinking of how both Charlie and the other male had taken the leading roles.

Charle shook his head. "It is as it is with humans: some are dominant, others submissive. We should, I think, all strive for equality – only then can we achieve true companionship. Such was the way we thought in my land, at least, and I know that was the way where you grew up." He threw his hands out, waiting until I was no longer tense from the sudden motion before he spoke again. "We are the same in many ways. Males of our kin can be more openly possessive when instincts take over, yes, but the more of us you meet, the more you will realize that most mates are in the end equal in most ways, or at least strive to be so. When you have as long lives as we have now and feel as intensely even the small things as we do, it is dangerous for one part to remain too dominant."

"But you both spoke for us", I said, unwilling to let it go. "It's not that I wished to speak, truthfully, but it seems strange to me."

"You are not a very dominant female. She was young and insecure." Charle shrugged, and I wondered if this was something he had ever thought much about. "Perhaps you will gain insight in the future, when we have met more of our kin and you have had the chance to study it yourself."

I smiled at him. "I would like that."

We started to move in the direction Charle had been taking us, before I was reminded of the bubble now constantly surrounding me. It was surprisingly easy to ignore it, as if I could push it out of my mind. It did not hinder my normal eyesight, almost as if it existed on another plane, and I wondered if it even was real. Could I be imagining it, I wondered? Was it possible for the mind to make such things up, perhaps to handle concepts it could not otherwise grasp at?

"There is a bubble around me", I stated stupidly and caused Charle to stop abruptly. "I could make them ignore me, as if I became but a spirit."

He frowned and then his eyes sharpened as if he was looking back at his memory and remembering how his attention had drifted to and fro during the confrontation with the others.

"Remarkable", he said and to my fascination a smile grew under his stubble. "Can you show me?"

I did as he asked, willing my bubble to expand and glow a stronger blue. His eyes drifted from me before focusing on me with renewed intensity.

"Remarkable", he repeated. "I can see you all the time, but as soon as I am not consciously thinking of you I am distracted. Part of me, unconsciously, tells me to not think twice of you. I can overpower it easily enough by reminding myself to think of you."

Intrigued I increased the strength of my bubble further, watching as he had a harder time focusing on me again. After a while he was able to pierce the bubble with his eyes again, turning his full attention to me despite my shield. We experimented for a while and I changed the bubble over and over, at one moment forcing it out and increasing its intensity and the next allowing it to fade. For each time we repeated, he found it easier to ignore how his mind whispered for him to ignore me.

"I have not told you this yet, Sabelä", he said as we experimented, "but some – very few – of us are turned into our kin with additional strengths. I can only explain it as gifts. I have been called a truth-seer: I know when you lie or when you speak truth, and I see through deceptions and illusions. It is, I believe, why I find it easier and easier to pay attention to you despite your shield. I'd say it is a big deception of the mind. You protect yourself by distracting the minds of others. My gift allows me to recognize it."

"That would not make it easier and easier for you to think of me, though, would it?" I pondered. "There has to be something more. Perhaps it is as you say, that your gift makes it far easier for you – but I think it is also because you know what to expect and how to counter it. I think it would be easier to ignore your mental suggestion if you recognized them for what they were: like when someone who seems nice manipulates you into giving away food."

He picked up my line of thoughts easily, seeming as excited as I felt. "Then, your bubble is not truly a shield, but a projection of subtle suggestions? Everything inside of it is encompassed in the shield, while everything outside of it is urged to not think of you. Here – try to strengthen it while I keep my back to you."

I did as he asked. A few moments later he waved at me to tone it down again.

"Well?" I asked before I could seal my lips shut.

He smiled widely. "I could still concentrate on you, but it was harder than if you weren't using the shield. The moment I tried to listen to your breath, I lost my concentration and my mind drifted for a while." He tilted his head. "I would guess that sounds, sights and scents are what trigger the distraction. If I don't know you are there and am not paying you attention in person, I am no threat to your private space and can think of you without problem, but the moment I try to move my physical attention to you the shield kicks in. I suspect it might also be because you do not have the power to know when others are thinking of you; you only feel the discomfort of their attention. However, it is also easier to break through and disregard the suggestions to ignore you if I can see you move."

"So attention to my presence triggers the suggestions", I concluded, "but at the same time visual stimulation from my side also makes it easier to ignore the bubble? A bit like how you stare and daydream, until something moves and you're awakened?"

"Perhaps."

We continued to experiment for the next few fortnights, both on Charle and on humans and animals in our path. A few times we even met others of our kin, and I always tried to grab the chance to practice my shield, even if Charle by then could easily tell when I was fading out of their minds and pleaded for me to get social experience with others. We determined many things in those fortnights, most of which in the long run seemed quite useless information. Still, much of it was very fascinating.

My shield worked the best on humans and animals, to the extent that I barely needed to think about it to make myself completely and utterly invisible to them. Our own kin was harder to influence, but as long as they were not already focusing intense emotions on me – such as anger – my shield still worked. When another accompanied us for a few days, hunting with us and running with us, it became apparent that while others could learn to recognize the subtle mental suggestions retroactively, none could truly learn to see through my shield the way Charle could. The one who kept us company for a while explained that it was like having warring thoughts, once he recognized the feeling; on one hand he knew what was happening to his mind, but on the other he couldn't summon the mental strength to care enough to fight it.

"You turn my mind against me", he accused me good-naturedly. "It's like every blade of grass and the scent of every insect within a mile is suddenly far more interesting than you could ever be. My mind does not want to pay attention to you. If another of our kin is near, or a human, it's completely impossible to think of you. If you make a ruckus, it draws my attention, but I cannot think of it for very long before the grass is more interesting again."

He left only days later, after he and I got into a very ugly fight over something as stupid and trivial as who got to walk in front of the other. I lost my left arm and got several crescent scars on my other arm while he lost his hand and got ugly bite marks in his face, before Charle managed to pull us apart and I pulled up my shield. I was intent of ambushing the other, but Charle's sharp look had me cowering back long enough that the younger male rushed off in a hissy fit. Charle gave me a stern talking to, but there was little surprise that things had turned out the way they had.

"Lick at your wounds", Charle told me. "The venom will help reattach your arm. The scars, however, will remain forevermore."

I think that might have been when I learned that our kind were truly, by nature or by the gods' wills, violent beings even amongst ourselves.

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><p><em><strong>AN: **_Thank you for reading! Maybe you have twenty seconds to write a little review? :) It doesn't have to be more than a word or two!

(I also very much appreciate constructive criticism, especially since this is not my usual writing style. I usually try to write "closer" to the POV character (poorly worded as that may be, as this is in first POV) without the kinds of timespans involved here, and I'm not wholly comfortable yet with the more formal tone I'm trying to achieve for this piece. Anything you can tell me, good and bad and just your experience of it, I'd very much appreciate!)


	4. To Uruk

_**A/N:**_

Hi everyone! Happy new year to you all! I apologize that this chapter is a bit late – Christmas is always a busy time of the year, and at our university we don't get the winter holidays off.

_To the amazing people who reviewed last chapter:_

- Yes, there will be meetings between the Swans and the other very old vampires. I'm not sure how far we are from that yet, storyline wise, but it will happen.

- I do have plans for her shield, but I'm still not quite sure how far I should let it develop. I don't want to make her over-powered; still, there's lots of potential in that kind of gift. Either way, as you could probably tell from chapter 3, Bella's shield allows her to handle (or avoid) situations that might otherwise have left her dead, which also explains why she of all people might live for a very long time.

- I know a month is pretty long time between updates (though, I suspect, far from the worst on your alert-lists) but I'll see what I can do to speed up my updates a bit.

**This story**_** WILL NOT**_** be Charlie/Bella. Ever. Please don't worry. **They are not related by blood here, and it felt right that they speak about it.

.

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><p><strong>Childe of the Swans<strong>

_**Chapter Four: To Uruk**_

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><p><em><strong>3920 BC, from Eastern Europe to Middle East <strong>_

Almost eighty years passed before Charle and I reached his home land by the river Euphrates. We had taken many a detour during our journey, making no haste for we had centuries to look forward to. At one point we had traveled further east on the continent than Charle had ever been, until we reached a land where others of our kind had said there were men who talked to horses. I had asked – more like demanded, and then groveled – for us to go there and see part of my dream come true, and though Charle had not been easy to sway I had managed in the end. Grudgingly he had later admitted that he was happy I had managed, for it was a sight to see.

The horses, many of them other colors than the different duns I was used to, were breathtaking. They pranced and shied away, came back to the humans like waves lapping at the pebbles and cliffs of the shores back home, and they nickered and threw their heads with more spirit than I had ever seen. They felt more alive than I had seen even dogs be, and I envied their energy as they kicked and reared and bucked. If the humans were gentle and still enough, the younger animals would allow themselves to be fed and petted. The tamed animals were bound by their heads and held in ropes, while the untamed pranced nervously at the edges of the human camp – all hungry for attention and curious about these humans who fed them instead of only hunted them, but too skittish to allow anyone too near. They had to be either reared by humans or broken in, the humans told us, and it was obvious how they prided themselves in telling us. We listened attentively to all they had to teach, and after almost two years of living with them we could both approach a young horse each. They never became as comfortable around us as they became around humans, for they always smelled the predators in us, but just as they learned not to fear dogs they learned not to fear our presence.

We were sitting on an outcrop and watching the sun set over the grass plains, almost a fortnight after we had left the horse masters, when I made my wishes clear.

"If we ever settle, like the humans you speak of in your home lands, I want to have horses", I said. "I may never have need of their strength to pull a load, or as a food reserve or watchers in the night, but they are the most beautiful animals I have seen among humans."

Charle laughed at me, throwing his head back and exposing the throat in a way he only ever did when only I was there, causing tremors of pleasure to thrum through me. Something animalistic, while neither sexual nor physical, pulsed inside me every time he bared his throat, as I knew any other of our kin felt when I bared mine. I knew there were two reasons. He was my Sire, and his visible comfort around me pleased me, but it was also the most ultimate and absolute sign of trust and submission for us. It made my body vibrate happily and caused my eyes to close in a sign of almost the same level of trust, and a soft rumble in my chest made Charle respond in kind.

"Purring", he explained to me. "It is not the rumble you or I will make when we have forced another into submission, physically or mentally, nor anything like a growl of intimidation or warning. It is rare even between mates, even if there need to be nothing sexual in it. Few are as comfortable around each other as we are, Sabelä, always remember that. Do not take it for granted."

His purr made my body relax and I bared my throat until I my spine was fully stretched out, and I reveled in the positive and soothing feelings the sound caused me. It reminded me of my mother's lullabies, or my father's soothing stories of bravery after I'd awakened from a nightmare. I tried to define sharing this with him in words, but was stumped. I tried to imagine that we were singing together: our new voices should have made us wonderful singers, I thought.

"I barely remember my father anymore", I whispered as the sounds in our chests died away. "I cannot even remember the names of my grandparents, or anyone in my tribe. I can barely remember my little brother's face. But… but I think, I think of you as my father now."

He turned and stared at me with unreadable eyes, and I turned away awkwardly.

"I trust you", I continued in a whisper, losing my nerve but set on getting my point across. "Even when I am angry for a good reason, or not, I trust you won't hurt me even when your own emotions get out of control. No matter how stupid things I ask, you have never become irritated with me."

He licked his lips, staring at me, and then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.

For a moment we sat completely still, staring each other in the eyes, unable to breathe. Then we pulled away, both of us making disgusted faces. It was hardly my first kiss, nor could it possibly have been his, and nothing but repulsion had surged up within me. It was nothing like kissing my husband had been.

"No." He shook his head. "You are right, Sabelä. All I feel for you… I can only imagine, for I have never had a child of my own, but this has to be how it feels to be a father. I could never love you like a mate. But I had to know, if we are to spend eternity together. My deepest apologies for kissing you."

I waved him off, because I understood how he felt. I had imagined how it would feel to kiss him too, even if I had never dreamed that I would feel like that for him. After so many years together, often alone for years at a time, it was impossible to never have imagined what it would have been like to be his mate instead, even if I now knew for sure that all I would ever feel for him was platonic love. We had been skirting around this issue for several decades now, and it felt suddenly liberating to have it out of the way.

"What is it like, for one of our kind to have a mate?" I wondered and fell back on the stone outcrop to lie on my back. I felt drained, but still satisfied to know that I had been right and that he felt the same.

He lifted a brow at me, but didn't lie down beside me. I had never seen Charle lie down.

"I wouldn't know", he chided me, but didn't remain silent for very long afterwards. "But it is much like when humans become pairs, only: true mates are for eternity. As humans we rarely find that one – and I believe, Sabelä, that we all have that One – and if we do, we are still prone to leave each other for pity reasons. As what we are now… I have heard it is like physical pain to see a true mate hurt, as if we experience the same pain they do. We care for them above ourselves, but it is also out of selfishness, because we cannot imagine life without them and do not wish to outlive them. To go too far away from a mate can be painful, especially in the first few decades, and most mates never leave each other's side for more than half a day at a time."

I frowned, wondering what it was like to be so dependent on another being. I knew dependency well, of course, because humans had a hard time surviving for long on their own and there was strength and safety in always staying with the tribe, but even in my family we tried to give each other space when we could. Even my mother and father preferred to now and then work in separate places, so as to allow each other a social life outside the family. As a human I used to go for long walks with the excuse of looking for food or firewood, or sit to myself and think while I worked on something. To not be able to be alone seemed like a horrible curse to have bestowed upon one – even Charle and I, who had stayed together for eighty years, often left each other to go hunting or to be alone for a day or two. It was nothing personal: we both needed and appreciated the silence and the opportunity to get lost in our own thoughts or the sight of a pretty flower. Rejoining afterwards made it even better, for it made us appreciate the companionship once more, too.

"It sounds horrible", I stated. "Like a fae's curse: 'You may never again walk under the trees alone to your thoughts'. To never be able to be truly alone to ones thoughts, knowing no one is watching, feeling completely free… never running for a day without seeing anyone…"

Charle laughed at me then: a light chuckle that told me he understood more of what I was saying than he was truly comfortable with. "I wouldn't image anyone who has met their mate would ever think that way."

I refrained from commenting on that, but in the privacy of my mind I thought to myself that I never wanted to find my mate, if it meant that I had to give up the freedom of dropping everything and running in whatever direction I suddenly felt like. I thought of my secret dances under the moon, my silly confrontations and conversations with animals in the forest, and my lapses in attention when a pretty leaf captured my full attention for hours – I would never want anyone to know of, even less witness, such precious and stupidly intimate moments.

"How does one recognize their mate?" I asked.

"I don't know."

We both left it at that, allowing ourselves to get lost in our own thoughts. I liked that about Charle: he had no problems dealing with my introspective times.

From the horse tamers in east we traveled southwest along the shores of magical waters where nothing sunk, down to the strait of the Ox-passage. It was far narrower than the strait between my home island and the continent, but as we crossed we found ourselves stepping into a new human culture, unfamiliar to me. It took us ten years to cross the lush, fertile lands of Mesopotamia, not because it was a long distance for our kind but because we found ourselves constantly making stops and detours.

When we reached Uruk I was not tired of traveling, the way I had thought I would be after more than eighty years of running. My body was tireless, my soul free of the burdens of daily survival. There was no need to fear the winter and the dark, no need to fear the ocean waves that pulled the strongest men under or the snow that suddenly tumbled in great waves down mountains. I had no need for gathering, barely even for hunting – when the thirst hit me, I lifted my nose and let my legs carry me to the closest prey.

Uruk was situated at the bank of a large, clear river that the people there called the Mother, the same way we had called our island's dirt our Mother. I saw few blond or red of hair here, but otherwise they were similar to people I had met before; their hair were often dark and their skin tan from the bright sun. I knew it was hot around us – I could smell it in the air – but no matter how Charle led us through the midday heat I never felt uncomfortable. Our kin did not feel uncomfortable by any temperatures known to us, and though I knew fire would kill us it was the flames that hurt, not the heat itself. When I held my hand above a flame, it did not hurt.

We reached Uruk in the late morning, though we had traveled so far south that the sun rose at almost the same time throughout the year. The first orange rays of sunlight made us glitter and cast of rainbows of light, and as we walked leisurely down the trail (and it was as wide as I was tall!) people stopped and stared. They fell to their knees in fear and awe, and we stopped to dip our heads at them like Charle taught me.

"The more you bend your body, Sabelä", Charle said to me in this newest language he had taught me, "the more respect you are giving. We dip our heads for good people; to the leaders of this land, we shall bend straight at the waist. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sire", I told him seriously and smiled as kindly as I could at a young woman who fell to her knees.

I had never seen humans react in fear to our skins before, but then again we usually met humans in the shadows and revealed our sparkling skins only once they were comfortable. I did not like the way they looked at us – even with the awe in their eyes, the visible fear made me uncomfortable and itchy to leave.

I tired quickly of the attention and my blueish, glowing bubble strengthened around me without need of conscious command. Charle's hand landed on my shoulder, light and carefree.

"I wish for them to see us both walk through the city, Sabelä – would it pain you so to walk openly for a day?"

I shook my head and my shield fell back, bouncing until it stretched tight and thin across my skin. The humans around us – more and more until I felt like I was swimming in flesh and blood – all shied away in fear and bowed in awe at our red eyes and sparkling skin, but it was Charle they called out to and it was Charle they all wanted to touch. Even when I held it back, my shield protected me from much of their attention. Their hands brushed against us and I felt like both a hunting trophy and the hunter which had brought the rare beast down. It was uncomfortable and my throat burned, but I did not attack them and they seemed only vaguely aware of the danger they were putting themselves in. The air smelled of humans and their dogs and sheep; of food and dust and fire; of sweat and feces and old, dirty clothes.

I had seen stone homes before, but none like the homes built in Uruk. They were built from brown-red pottery, standing in wobbly lines with wide trails in between, where humans were bustling about in masses. It was as if every home, as big as any family tent back home, housed a whole tribe, and they all poured out to greet us on the trail.

"This is a _road_, Sabelä", Charle told me in the language of Uruk as we greeted person after person. "It is a stamped trail, always at least as wide as I am tall and often twice that. The homes are called _houses,_ which are stable and permanent – _buildings _is another word for them, though it carries slightly different connotations_. _The _houses _are shaped like connecting _rectangles, _that is, they have four straight walls and a flat roof. The houses you have seen before have all been round; here, they do not worry about snow."

I tried to take it all in as he spoke, but it was hard even with the mental prowess of our kin. People were calling and screaming and shouting, and it was as if I had shrunken and stepped into an ant hill. Never had I imagined so many humans in one place – as we walked, I counted hundreds and hundreds without end. It was surreal and I wondered if this was how the stars in the night sky felt when they looked at their siblings.

"Hail! Hail, those with skin of the sun!" a clear voice called ahead, and I looked up to see a man rise above the crowds.

He stood, I quickly came to realize, on a wooden platform held up by six strong men and he was clothed in fabrics, the likes of which I had never seen before. The clothes he wore were large and flowing, parts of it colored in red as if he had bathed them in blood until the color could not be washed out. However, as the wind shifted and blew his scent to me I found he smell little more of blood than any human would.

"Hail, priest of Uruk!" Charle called back and at his gesture we both bowed at the chest. "We have traveled far and wide, from beyond the sea where none sinks and as far again to the west where cliffs fall a hundred feet down into the ocean, to see the great city which is held in awe as far as word can travel! The city of my birth!"

The humans murmured in appreciations of my Sire, and I wondered if my pride would make me glow even more than I already did under the brilliant sun. I wondered what _priest_ meant, but did not ask yet. I figured it meant "chief", because it seemed to me as if he was the leader of these people.

The priest came up to us at a slow pace, the men carrying his platform walking as one greater being without the need for words to communicate. Around us humans gathered, more and more until I would have needed to step on them to get away. I had no heartbeat that could beat harder or faster in my chest, but I felt cornered and under attack by the round-eyed gazes.

"Welcome!" The priest smiled widely, and in his eyes I saw the same fear as in the other humans. "Be welcome, Sun-Gods! Welcome to Uruk, glorious city of Sumer!"

"We are most honored, Priest of Uruk!" Charle smiled without showing his teeth. "Oh, I pray – shall we be allowed to view this city?"

I felt there should have been goose bumps on my skin, but there were none. I watched the priest's smile freeze in place, and his dark eyes darted between us and the people gathered. It was as if I was watching a power struggle in my tribe, only I did not fully understand the conflict.

"Please, Sun-Gods!" the priest called and gestured next to himself on the platform. "Join me, the High Priest of Uruk, and I shall show you through our city!"

I threw a glance at Charle, but he did not look uncomfortable and I followed him through the corridor of humans. We took a leap, Charle first and I soon after him, up on the platform and for a moment I was sure that I would crash through the wood like a too heavy stone. I knew we were heavier than humans, if not as heavy as a stone our size would be, and beneath the platform the carriers made sounds of surprise as the new weight registered in their bodies and minds. I stood still as a stone, waiting for the men to give out under us and for the platform to rush to the ground. But the men of Uruk must have been of remarkable blood, for they regained their wits in moments. The platform turned around slowly until we were facing the other direction, and it felt a bit like floating in the shallow, bobbing waves at the shore – only I was upright, and my feet were firmly planted on wood.

Charle gestured for me to stand on the other side of the priest's seat, and together we flanked him like he was our chief and we were about to meet another tribe head on. It felt strange, for this was not my chief – I had no chief no longer, but if I had to follow I followed Charle and not this "priest" – and I did not know where we were going or for what purpose. But Charle had a smile on his face, his eyes so happy that I could not find it in myself to say anything to bring him out of his joyous return home, even for a moment.

We waved and bowed as we were moved down the city roads, and I stared in awe as a building unlike anything else I had ever heard of came into sight. It rose six times the height of any of the other buildings, with four hundred wide steps leading up to its top. Made out of some kind of red, rectangular stones that reminded of pottery, it was a rectangular, man-made mountain worthy of the gods I had only ever dreamed of seeing. We were carried in seats of woven reed and precious stones up the steps of the building, large men like muscular bulls carrying us ever up. It would have taken me but a blink of the eye to climb the four hundred steps on my own, but I would have missed this incredible moment: the sun making Charle shine like a star in front of me, carried up the steps of a man-made mountain. I thought he looked like their chief come home.

"A _ziggurat_", I heard Charle murmur under his breath to me, too quietly for the humans around us to hear. "It houses the temple of this city's powerful gods. Do not anger them, Sabelä."

I would never dream of angering the gods that demanded and were worthy of a _ziggurat_ like this one.

Young women, all my own age and all far more beautiful than I had ever been, stood around the edges at the top of the building. They were clad in pale clothes in one piece that wrapped around their bodies all the way to their knees, with bangles of precious metals and stones clasped around their throats, wrists and ankles. No hides were wrapped around their feet to protect them from the warm ground: instead they had woven reeds into tiny rectangles and tied these onto the soles of their feet. The women all gasped and swooned in wonder as Charle was carried up the last few steps, but they did not leave their positions overlooking the great city. I wanted to turn in my seat and allow myself a look of the city, too, but I did not dare in fear of angering our hosts.

An ornate, rectangular building sat at the very top of the ziggurat, and I judged this to be the temple that Charle had spoken of. We were carried to the wall and put down, and my mouth fell open. A rectangular piece of the wall parted in the middle and was pushed out by equally large men to the ones who had carried us: before our eyes an entrance was opened into the temple, and soft sounds came from within.

We entered after the priest who chanted under his breath as he walked, perhaps to ward off any ill-wishes or deceit we might carry with us. I felt no different when I stepped through the entrance, and I hoped that this was because I brought with me nothing ill. My very bones trembled at the thought of being perceived as a threat by these unknown gods, solely based on my need for human blood.

The priest turned to us and the wall closed behind us. The very room – for it was one big room, with a pedestal clad in fabrics and precious stones in the middle – hummed with energy.

Was this how it felt to be close to the gods? This sense of awe? Or was that just an effect of seeing a city with all its inhabitants for the first time?

"I am Charle, the Walker and the one who wanders amongst Men. This is my daughter, Sabelle, Child of White Birds."

That was the day we were praised as gods who had been sent to walk among humans. I knew better of course, for I knew we were no gods but solely gifted by the stars in the sky to remind of them, but Charle did not agree with me. He told me we were still humans, no better than them, and that we should be grateful for every smile we received.

I still thought that we had to be the children of stars to sparkle like we did, but I silently agreed with him that we were no better than these people. There was so much they knew that I had never heard of, so much they could teach me. If we had been gods, as they hailed us, I was positive I would not have had to ask them to explain their inventions and ideas to me.

We had arrived to Uruk, and it was beyond my wildest imaginations.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: The strait mentioned is of course the Bosporus in Turkey which also separates Europe from Asia and Middle East, and which ranges between 3000-700 meters in width. (The Greek name "Bosporus" derives from the word for ox/cattle, thus the name means "ox-passage" or "ox-ford" in English, but I thought the latter might confuse a lot of people.)**


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